Michael Lenox

Michael J. Lenox is a faculty senior fellow at the Miller Center, where he serves as an academic co-director of the Project on Democracy and Capitalism. His primary appointment is as the Tayloe Murphy Professor of Business Administration at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. From 2016-2023, he served as Darden's senior associate dean and chief strategy officer and is currently special advisor to the dean for strategic initiatives.

From 2008 to 2016, Lenox served as associate dean of innovation programs and academic director of Darden's Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He helped found and served as the inaugural president of the multiple-university Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability. 

Before arriving at UVA in 2008, Lenox served as a tenured associate professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and as an assistant professor at New York University's Stern School of Business. He has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, Harvard University, Oxford University, and IMD. 

Lenox earned his PhD in technology management and policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BS and MS in systems engineering from the University of Virginia.

Lenox's research has appeared in more than 30 refereed academic publications and has been cited in dozens of media outlets including The New York Times, the Financial Times, and The Economist. He is the author of five books including his 2023 release, Strategy in the Digital Age, from Stanford University Press. Since 2021, he has been the co-host of the podcast “Good Disruption.”

In 2009, Lenox was recognized as a Faculty Pioneer by the Aspen Institute and as the top strategy professor under 40 by the Strategic Management Society. In 2011, he was named one of the top 40 business professors under 40 by Poets & Quants. 

Lenox's primary expertise is in the domain of technology strategy and policy. He is broadly interested in the role of innovation and entrepreneurship for economic growth and firm competitive success. In particular, he explores the business strategy and public policy drivers of the direction of innovative activity. Lenox also has a longstanding interest in the interface between business strategy and public policy as it relates to the natural environment. Recent work includes the books Can Business Save the Earth? (2018) and The Decarbonization Imperative (2021), both from Stanford University Press.